Optimism might feel outdated, but Downtown Boys are proud outliers. On Public Luxury, the Rhode Island band’s third and best album, they wear their politics proudly – while bringing new ambiguity, strangeness and shadow to their passionate, sax-blasted bilingual punk. Opener No Me Jodas (Don’t Fuck With Me) comes out roaring, fists up, but gives way to a bouncing, joyous bassline: a brutal, big-hearted reminder that there’s beauty in fighting for what you believe in.
In the nine years since the band’s last record, they’ve served as public defenders and co-founded the United Musicians and Allied Workers union, and the five-piece sound muscled-up, reinvigorated, by this work. Viva La Rosa kicks off like dive-bar punk, before transforming into something grander, with soaring electric guitar and darkly beautiful lyrics: “Todavía creo en un future / Todavía veo nuestros muertos” (I still believe in a future / I still see our dead).
